‘For the bargain-basement atheism of our day, it is not enough that there be no God: there must be only matter. Now Nagel’s new book fulfills his old warning. A mob is indeed forming, a mob of materialists, of free-thinking inquisitors.’

The New Republic is generally center-left.

–Edward Feser has been reviewing Nagel’s book and the response to it in a series of posts. Recommended.

–Recently, British thinker Alain De Bottonfloated the idea of building an ‘atheist temple’ in the heart of London. He recommends combing through religious practices for useful organizing principles in response to the New Atheists. You can read more about it here, which includes a radio interview/podcast.

Addition: Paul Rahe has more, and wonders at Steven Pinker’s suspicion of the religious to impede science, as though all sorts of utopians, ideologues, and the closed-minded everywhere aren’t really friends of free inquiry.